


Regrets

by MrsHamill



Series: Grandmother Raven: The Path of a Shaman [7]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Drama, Episode Related, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-08-10
Updated: 2001-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 06:37:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/794974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsHamill/pseuds/MrsHamill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Which Blair is sad, Jim is freaked, and Grandmother gets a headache.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Regrets

**Author's Note:**

> Begins at the very end of Night Shift, and ends two days before Sentinel Too, Part One which, for the purpose of this series, I'm assuming began about that time. Next up is SenToo. Fox, as usual, has kept me on the straight and narrow. Well, the narrow, anyway.

_Which of us cannot remember a moment when we did or said precisely the wrong thing, irretrievably, irreparably? The instant the action was completed or the words were spoken we burned with shame and regret, but what we had done never could be repaired. Such moments are rare, and they occur most often in childhood, before we have been trained to think before we act._  
  
          -- Roger Ebert, in his review of "Au Revoir les Enfants"  
  


* * *

Obviously exhausted, Blair looked around the plaza, where the brightening morning revealed the devastation from the night before. A camera crew was still shooting footage of that ridiculous alligator, and a cleanup crew (thank God the city had finally come through on the new contract for city services) was working on repairing the front of the station. "Phew. Man, that was one hell of a night, huh?" Blair said, running his hands through his hair.

Jim nodded glumly. A hell of a night indeed. He had screwed up -- badly. "Hey, Chief," he said, careful not to look directly at Blair, "you think you can still get the intro to your dissertation in on time? I mean, you know, aside from the stuff about me, I... I thought, I thought it was pretty good -- really good."

"Jim, it's all about you." Blair's voice sounded as exhausted as he looked, but there was something more. Defeat -- Blair sounded defeated. Damn.

"Yeah, but nobody needs to know that, right?" Jim asked, sounding whiny even to himself. "Let me ask you something. Between you and I, do you think I'm paranoid?"

"Jim, if you got to ask... You know what I mean?" Blair replied, laughing weakly. Yeah, Jim knew exactly what Blair meant. Exactly.

Simon broke into Jim's train of thought with news about Johnny Macado, and how the DA was granting him immunity. Only half-listening, Jim nursed a headache and a growing sense of despair over the events of the night before. Reading Blair's dissertation had been a major mistake, and not only because of how it sounded to him. Apologizing for reading it had really only made things worse. Even though Jim cared about what happened to the Macado kid, his own problems were overshadowing everything. Caught up in his thoughts, he didn't even see Megan approach until Blair spoke to her.

"Hey, Megan, any word on Gabe?" Blair asked, and Jim was reminded of the strange man's haunting words... whispers of his own heart...

Megan was talking, and belatedly, Jim focused on her words. "...spoke with the hospital. Gabe made it there okay -- touch and go, but breathing. He's all prepped for OR, the orderly turns his back and Gabe... vanished into thin air."

They all blinked in surprise, and Simon said, "Yeah, but he's done it before from the university."

"There's more," Megan continued. "I got a follow-up fax on his fingerprints. Professor Harold Blake officially died of exposure in Chicago last winter."

"So, Johnny Macado was saved by a dead man," Simon said, his tone incredulous. "That's good." He and Megan turned to head back into building, Jim and Blair following them.

Clearing his throat, Jim said, "You know, it's like the, uh... the Jimmy Stewart movie... 'It's a Wonderful Life'." And like how I wouldn't have survived if Blair had never come into my life, Jim continued in his mind.

"Ah, whenever a bell rings, an angel gets his wings," Blair said, his voice nearly drowned out by the bells ringing matins at St. Stephen's.

"Uh, yeah," Jim replied, carefully picking his way through the glass and wood debris still littering the plaza. "Listen, Chief," he said, as they finally made it into the relative peace of the lobby, "why don't you just leave the Volvo here. I can drive us out to breakfast, my treat, then drop you off at the university -- or wherever."

Blair stopped and looked at Jim, his eyes sad and his posture slumped. "No, that's okay, Jim," he said, "I'm not real hungry anyway. And I don't think I could sleep -- too wound up, you know?"

Yeah, Jim did know. "I just... I mean, I didn't... aw shit, Chief..." Why was it so damn hard to say he was sorry?

"Jim. I know, man," Blair said, his tone light, but his eyes still haunted. "I'll see you back at the loft. Later. Okay?"

"Yeah, okay, Chief," Jim muttered, watching Blair walk away from him, step by step.

* * *

  
Blair drove aimlessly through the increasing morning traffic, at one point headed towards Rainier, at another, the loft. Recriminating and hurtful words kept bouncing around his head... 'I call it a violation of friendship and trust.' 'Threatened by you? I don't think so, Chief.' 'What does my sex life got to do with your project?' 'You know, I thought we were friends.' God.  
  
Finally, he noticed the traffic jam he was stuck in was downtown, near the arena, and he realized he could pull into the parking lot coming up and walk to the CNARC. Chances were that Grandmother wasn't even there, but at least the place was more conducive to calm thought than driving in rush hour traffic in Cascade was.  
  
Suiting action to thought, shortly he was walking down the sidewalk towards the sprawling grounds, the oasis of green in the middle of the city. Some might decry tribal elders for taking advantage of U.S. law to operate casinos on tribal land, but if good things like the CNARC could come out of it, Blair saw no reason to quibble. Once the heavy redwood doors swung shut behind him, the traffic, the noise and the odors of the city were gone, replaced by the trickle of water in the artificial brook.  
  
Blair was sitting there, idly allowing his fingers to dangle in the cool water when Grandmother found him. "Blair?" she called from across the hall. He looked up to see her approaching, a worried frown on her face. "I didn't know you were here, why didn't you come back?"  
  
"Didn't know you were here either," he said, standing and wiping his damp fingers on his jeans. "Thought you and Violet had already left for the potlatch. Just wanted a quiet place to think, you know? It's been a long night."  
  
She examined his face carefully. "Yes, I can see that. Why don't you come back to my office. I've got some coffee on."  
  
"Yeah, that sounds great," Blair replied, following her down the hall.  
  
"Violet and I don't leave until the weekend," she said over her shoulder, as she led him to her cubby-hole office. "Her spring break week, you know. I thought you told me you'd be turning in your introductory chapter this morning. Why aren't you at the U?"  
  
"Had... had a lot to think about," Blair mumbled as he sat heavily in one of her comfortable chairs. "I'm not sure... well, I don't think... maybe, I shouldn't..."  
  
"Spit it out, boy," she said gently, handing him a cup of coffee, fixed the way he liked it.  
  
"Maybe I shouldn't turn in my diss at all," he said, after taking a sip. Grandmother always had the best stash of coffee, aside from Simon. "I mean, I know it's compromised. I know, well, hell. It's basically shit, Grandmother. I tried to make it sound as scholarly as possible, as scientific as possible, but I've gotta face the truth here. I've only got one subject. And... and, well, you've said it. I'm biased. I've gone native," he finished in a whisper.  
  
"We've already talked about that, young pup," she said, sitting with her own coffee. "And I remember I told you I thought you could still do it, despite the fact that you've crossed that line. Why are you having second thoughts now?"  
  
Blair looked up at her with haunted eyes. "Jim read the chapter," he said quietly.  
  
Grandmother looked down at the cup in her hand, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like "Oh, shit."  
  
"Yeah." Blair took a sip of coffee. "It... it wasn't really his fault. Hell, I did everything but dangle the damn thing in front of his face. Why am I so surprised that he'd give in to curiosity and read it?"  
  
"I take it he didn't like what he read there," she murmured.  
  
Blair laughed shortly, bitterly. "Oh, yeah, you could say that," he said. "Let's see... a violation of our friendship. I've betrayed his trust in me. I went behind his back and talked to people I had no right to talk to. I think those are the highlights."  
  
As Blair watched, Grandmother almost seemed to sink into herself, her face reflecting her sorrow. "Oh, Blair," she said, "I'm sorry. Surely it's just that he doesn't understand. He's not an academic; he can't know what it is you're writing. He couldn't have meant--"  
  
"Oh, yeah, he did," Blair interrupted her. "He felt sorry afterwards, but he meant it at the time. I always had this fear, this terror, that the damned diss would come between us. And now it has. I don't know what to do, Grandmother."  
  
They sat together in silence for a few minutes, Blair staring into his coffee cup as if looking for answers. "You should turn in your chapter," Grandmother finally said, quietly.  
  
He looked up at her with eyes that burned. "If I do that... I don't turn in the diss, I lose my grants, my fellowship, probably my last chance to get my degree. But if I turn it in... I lose... I lose Jim. I lose my home, my friend, my work at the PD..."  
  
"You don't know that."  
  
"The hell I don't," Blair replied, too tired to put any heat behind the words. "Unlike Jim, I know what fear-based responses mean. He reacts to a threat in the same manner a tribal watchman would react -- immediately and viscerally. The diss is a huge threat to him -- as he perceives it, anyway -- and his only thought is to get it out of his life." Blair looked down again, swallowing heavily. "I had hoped to talk to him about it, explain the whole procedure to him, once my intro got accepted -- or rejected, whichever. But now... anything I try to tell him, it'll just be shaded by what he's read."  
  
Blair shook his head sadly. "I blew it, Grandmother. I blew it big time. And I don't know what to do. I don't have a single goddamned clue."  
  
Grandmother Raven put her mug on the small table between them and rubbed her eyes hard. " _S'eilekh ten_ ," she muttered under her breath. "My life was peaceful until you two riled it up." Blair smiled without mirth and finished his coffee. "I still don't believe that you have no options here, boy," Grandmother said after a while. "You're putting the worst possible face on it. Jim will forgive you, he'll understand, he's not an ignorant savage."  
  
"I know that," Blair said, slumping. "It's just... " Blair turned haunted eyes up to her. "He's become almost like my life, Grandmother," he admitted hoarsely. "The thought of losing him..."  
  
Shaking her head sharply, Grandmother said, "Blair... oh for pity's sake. Stop that. This whole miscommunication thing you two have is becoming like a bad romance novel."  
  
Blair blinked. "A what?" he said, shocked. "I'm... it's not... what are you..."  
  
"Hush. Why did you come here, boy? Just to think or to get advice from an old woman? Why do either of you come to seek me out? Just to drive me crazy? I'm not a mind reader, and I'm not a psychiatrist -- I'm just a person who unfortunately loves both of you." She sighed. "But if you truly want my help, I'll give it to you."  
  
"I... but... you..." Blair seemed incapable of completing a sentence, her words still ringing through his head -- bad romance novel...  
  
"Go to the University," she said, slowly and distinctly, interrupting his inarticulate protestations. "Turn in your chapter. Get it accepted. Then go home and _talk_ to your _partner_. Jim knows all too well what this degree means to you. He will forgive you. Not that there's anything _to_ forgive, of course," she added in a mutter.  
  
"But... but..." Blair was still stunned.  
  
"What is more important to you, Blair?" she asked, clearly frustrated with his behavior. "Getting your degree and moving on with your life, or maintaining the status quo? Becoming a professional student, a perpetual ABD, all because you're too afraid to take a chance, to trust in someone you love who loves you?"  
  
"I... " Blair had never thought about it in those terms before, and the concept rocked him. Jim had all but accused him of betrayal the night before, of violating their friendship, the trust they had between them. But he knew he hadn't, not really, and that it was only Jim's inner-jaguar speaking. Speaking before thinking. Fear-based responses.  
  
But only part of Jim was a Sentinel. There was an intelligent, rational, sensitive person in there too, a person who gave Blair unexpected hugs, who held his head over the toilet when he was sick and made him noodles when he was sad. "It's been a long, stressful night," Blair murmured, almost to himself. "Once we've had some sleep, gotten rested..."  
  
"There's no way anyone can think sensibly on no sleep," Grandmother agreed. "It's partly why sleep deprivation -- not to mention fasting -- is so important on major spirit walks. Your rational brain disengages, and allows the more primitive part to control."  
  
"You've been reading psychology texts again," Blair accused her mildly, still caught up in his own satori.  
  
"Guilty," she said, smiling. "I figure the way you two keep bothering me, perhaps I'd better brush up on my head shrinking."  
  
"Okay," Blair said finally, "I get it. We can talk tonight, after we've rested. I'll have the decision from my committee, and we... we can hash it out. Just knowing there's no alligator around should make us calmer."  
  
Grandmother stared at him. "Alligator? Do I _really_ want to know?"  
  
"You'll find out on the news tonight," Blair assured her.  
  


* * *

  
Grandmother Raven walked Blair to the front door of the CNARC, her arm around his shoulders, but staying silent, appreciating his need to think. He kissed her cheek in the lobby and gave her a hug, then went outside without another word. She sighed and walked back to her office, pouring herself another cup of coffee when she got there. "I take it you heard it all," she said. "Would you like some more coffee?"  
  
"No, thanks," Jim said, his face still stricken.

end


End file.
